women suffer in real life over the loss of children, husband, and home, as you suffered before my very eyes last night in the play; if my wife is tortured like that, it would have been better for me to have passed out of life, and have left her in peace. But I did not know that women suffered so. Help me, advise me."
I could not ignore that last appeal. What my answer was you will not care to know; but if it was brief, it was at least not flippant; and before writing it, I, in my turn, appealed for help, only my appeal was made upon my knees to the Great Authority.
On election nights it is customary for the manager to read or have read to the audience the returns as fast as they come in from various points, showing how the voting has gone.
[Illustration: Clara Morris and James Parselle in 3d Act of "Miss Multon"]
An election was just over, when one evening a small incident occurred during a performance of "Miss Multon" that we would
gladly have dispensed with. In the quarrel scene between the two women, the first and supposedly dead wife, in her character of governess to her own children, is goaded by the second wife into such a passion that she finally throws off all concealment and declares her true character and name.
The scene was a strong one, and was always looked forward to eagerly by the audience.
On the evening I speak of the house was packed almost to suffocation. The other characters in the play had withdrawn, and for the first time the two women were alone together. Both keyed up almost to the breaking point, we faced each other, and there was a dead, I might almost say a deadly pause before either spoke.